Love As Laughter

Destination 2000

by Mike Pace

First the Backstreet Boys released Millenium. Then Will Smith had a hit with “Will2K.” Even Queensryche attempted to revive their bloated carcass of a career with the laughable “Q2K.” Now it’s Love as Laughter’s turn to cash in on Millennium Madness. However, this is what you call a solid record. A really well done effort from Sam Jayne and company, who have had a lot to live up to since his last band, Lync, who were so family funkin’ good, broke up about five years ago. This is LAL’s third album and they increase the rock quotient a few increments with every release. 1998’s #1 USA was a solid rock record, a combination of catchy riffs and sloppiness that equaling what the purists call “indie rock.” With Destination 2000, Jayne has concocted a veritable elixir of rock ‘n’ roll goodness, mixin’ and matchin’ the drivin’ down Route 66 riffs with some down-home acoustic meddlin’.

That’s right, this is the white meat (or, dark meat, if that’s what you prefer). I hear a little Pavement in “Margaritas,” but that’s a good thing. “On the Run” is the best song Black Oak Arkansas never wrote, and it sounds like something you’d play at a biker convention in the summer of 1976, it’s that good. There’s even some stuff that sounds a little like the Stones circa Exile on Main Street. Come on, how could you go wrong? Unlike rockin’ labelmates Nebula or the Go (both good bands in their own right), it’s not purely derivative of another era of music. LAL take the best elements of all these bands and perfect them. In essence, this is the epitome of the rock record, and it’s a low down dirty shame that their aren’t as many as good as this one lining the store racks.